I picked up this story from James Taranto’s daily email newsletter:
A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. Two people were treated for “minor exposure,” but no serious injuries were reported.
“The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq. “The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.
“A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent,” he said.
Interesting. Our enemies are attacking us with those nasty nonexistant weapons.
I will be watching the network News tonight to see if something as inconsequential as the use of nerve gas against American troops gets mentioned. There are, after all, really important stories running: like the life story of a young American dominatrix and how she found fame in an Iraqi prison…
Whee, big deal. Promise a whale, produce a plankton, and say “hah! look, see! we were right all along!” Hardly.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, Julian. It looks to me like whomever set up that boobie trap didn’t even realize that he had a gas munition, or else they could have done a lot more damage. So presumably, they have weaponized gas (and possibly bio) munitions possibly mixed into a cache of conventional ammuntion. Lovely. This doesn’t exactly fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings.
Let’s not forget that unlike Saddam, who has to leave his hole every once in a while, a small stockpile can just stay buried indefinitely. It took us nearly a year to find Saddam, yet we never doubted his existence. It’s exactly the same with these weapons. We know he had these weapons, there’s never been any doubt about that. The question is whether they’ve all been destroyed or not. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t trust the former regime that much.
The BBC’s Frank Gardner (bbc24) has kindly informed us that there really is only one type of WMD, ie nuclear
Perhaps he should also tell that to the Kurds.
promise a whale, produce a plankton? i thought the premise of this argument was that the iraqis had no plankton in the first place.
Hank:
Maybe the weapons can stay buried indefinitely, but whether or not they remain usable is a different question. Many biological and nerve agents have a limited shelf life and need to be stored in carefully controlled conditions. If there are stockpiles of Sarin in Iraq they would have been manufactured at least several years ago, and are probably now useless. I remember reading somewhere that the chemical munitions found in Iraq after Gulf War I contained badly deteriorated agents and many were leaking badly. So I doubt very much whether the Sarin found in the shell came from Saddam’s alleged stockpiles. It would more likely have been recently manufactured.
Julian — most bigots have the good sense not to advertise the fact. I see you’re an exception.
Thanks for the candor.
Aral — that’s a very curious argument you seem to be making. What news report are you relying on when you assert the weapon was neither “badly deteriorated” nor “leaking badly” before it exploded? A naive person might hypothesize that the lack of fatal issue when the device exploded might be attributable to deterioration or leakage. I have no idea what storage conditions are available in Iraq, but Saddam did seem to have a fondness for burying things, no? Even in the brutal Iraqi summer and winter, buried objects can be kept at relatively steady temperature. Sarin-containing artillery shells in the US cold war arsenal had a shelf-life of decades at constant temperature.
Out of curiosity, where do you think the sarin came from, if not Saddam’s stocks?
Harry:
*ahem* yes, I didn’t mean to imply that the weapon found was not leaking or deteriorated.
Actually, it has yet to be confirmed that what was found is Sarin. Donald Rumsfeld has indicated that testing will take some time. My bet is that it is a false alarm, just like all those others during the past year or so. Where else could Sarin come form? Iran? Syria? Al Qaeda? It wouldn’t be hard to smuggle across the border into Iraq.
I guess the question of shelf-life is quite important here. If it is newly manufactured then we need to know sooner rather than later.
Rumsfeld is *always* noncommittal until the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed in the final investigative reports. Nothing new there.
But there is enough information for us to surmise this was quite real. The shell was a binary munition. They are armed when fired from a cannon and consequently spun up in the barrel. Two stable and safe precursors are stored in compartments that keep them securely seperated under normal circumstances; but the G’s of launch breach the confinement and the spin mixes and reacts them in flight. There is little explosive except that needed to break open the canister and disperse the agent. This type of shell can last decades. Just ask the US officials charged with safely getting rid of stocks which have been lined up awaiting destruction for perhaps a decade.
It seems the people who made the IED had no idea what they were using, or if they did had no idea how they worked. There was only a small explosion, not what one expects from a real HE 155mm shell. The explosion spread the binary chemicals without giving them time to mix, thus very little Sarin was generated. Because of this the disposal team were only slightly exposed to the agent. They were checked out and released back to duty in short order.
I have also read a statement that modern counter-agents are so good that Sarin is nearly obsolete for battlefield use.
This of course is of little comfort to civilians in an unprepared environment.
Dale — thanks for the added detail. Let’s hope the bombers don’t learn from their mistakes — and figure out how to make effective IEDs out of whatever other chemical shells they may have laid hold of. There is no reason to think they’d scruple to deploy the next one in a crowded market where antidote auto-injectors are pretty scarce.
Dale:
That’s probably a fair statement when talking about modern armies well equipped with atropine, although you could still get some casualties if not every soldier had an injector with him or received an injection from someone else soon enough. (I have an amusing story about learning to use the injectors in basic training — for another day.) I don’t know if less modern and well-equipped armies would be as well prepared.
But to return to what is perhaps the more important issue here, a shell such as this, properly deployed, could cause a lot of casualties among civilians. I don’t know that anyone was all that wrapped around the axle about the prospect of Saddam using them on foreign armies, as he did against Iran. I think the concern was more that he would use them against civilians — in Iraq or elsewhere — as he did with the Kurds.
Julian:
Stick to your guns. I wouldn’t admit defeat that easily, either. You could yet turn out to be right, if you set the bar high enough. Personally, my bar has been set where Resolutions 687 and 1441 put it, so I’ve been satisfied for a long time. (Whew, that’s the most supportive thing I’ve said about the UN in years. It’s so much easier to feel positive about someone when they’re on your side!)
Well put. Translation for the obtuse: the war was waged because Saddam failed to comply with UN resolutions requiring him to submit to disarmament verification, not because he was flaunting a huge NBC stockpile.
The earlier excuse for the war wasn’t that Saddam had WMD (the Brits and French have them, too) – the excuse was the fear that he’d turn them over to terrorists. Assuming it really was nerve gas, what this means is that the first ‘WMD’ (despite evidently not being all that destructive) found was used by terrorists. The fun part is watching the War Party (if not here, then elsewhere) try to spin this as vindication, instead of further proof they were wrong.
The most anyone can claim is that terrorists used nerve gas in a war fought to keep terrorists from using nerve gas, and the terrorists found the WMD our idiot govts couldn’t (assuming this even was nerve gas).
Err, maybe not. Most likely, the bombing was perpetrated not by random “terrorists” but by Baathist holdouts or fellow travelers who, among other things, would know where to find whatever nasty stuff is hidden in Iraq. Smoke that in your pipe for a bit and consider what lessons rational people should draw from this.
Nothing but raw assertion on your part.
Whenever I hear the term “War Party” my first impulse is to ask the person using it what color the sky is in their world, because its a dead giveaway that your talking to someone seriously unhinged from reality.
For the record: Saddam Hussein, after being armed to the teeth by the Soviet Union, Germany and France, initiated force against Kuwait and threatened the global economy by threatening the oil supply.
After losing that war, he proceeded to violate every part of the cease-fire agreement repeatedly, including the attempted assasination of a U.S. President, and firing on U.S. and coalition aircraft protecting innocent people from genocide.
Osama bin Laden declared war on the U.S. in 1998 and backed it up with several horrific terrorist attacks around the world, culiminating in a direct attack upon U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
I think Scott and other paleo-isolationists are slightly confused as to who the War Party really is.
Two people were treated for “minor exposure,” but no serious injuries were reported.
Weapon of mass destruction, indeed.
We invaded a nation….because of THIS?
Is that faint rustling noise in the background the sound of the pro war dummies clutching at straws?
The sequence of events:
1. US fucking up big time in war.
2. US crusaders found to be rapists, torturers and murderers.
3. Top guys suggested to be implicated in raping and murdering.
4. Single WMD shell found in roadside bombing…
Smacks of CIA fun and games to me.
You’re right, there is no War Party. Our reluctant govts were forced to go to war w/ Saddam because of the massive pro-war demonstrations we were seeing every day. All those signs saying “Don’t wait for the inspections, invade NOW!!!” still stick in my mind. When the Weekly Standard and National Review finally came around in support of the war, what a happy day that was.
What was I thinking?
Appears that the munition in question was an unmarked shell that predated even the first gulf war. It may very well be that even Saddam and his minions didn’t know where it was or that they had a few left at all. They may even had believed that they had zero (or almost zero) WMD (not that they would admit it, trying to bluff us).
Bored has been watching too many Hollywood movies and is unable to distinguish between reality and fiction.
Wait until ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is released then all will see the idiocy of make-believe.
I guess better to watch “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow”, directed by Orson Welles.
The shell will turn out to have contained more “insecticide” – part of Saddam’s humanitarian program to help the swamp arab’s malaria problem. The mustard gas munition set off last week was actually a misused condiment.
Hey all,
I have to admit I’m not too surprised by Garth’s news.
Saddam was one of the most incompetent fools to ever
run a government, and even competent governments
lose stuff all the time. A single old, unmarked shell that
the insurgents probably thought was just another
155mm arty round isn’t that big of a deal. Now, if they
start doing more chemical attacks, then we’d have
reason to believe this wasn’t just a fluke.
As a side note, you report on your blog more recently
that the US government accidentally misplaced several
very large torpedoes in Baltimore. If even the US gov,
which as incompetent as it is was definitely a lot more
competent than Saddam’s government ever was, can
misplace weapons without even knowing about it, is it
really unreasonable to expect that Iraq may have
missed some too?
I’ve found that it is usually better to assume stupidity
and incompetence instead of malice, as you usually
end up being right. The world is full of stupid leaders.
~Jon Goff
“You’re right, there is no War Party. Our reluctant govts were forced to go to war w/ Saddam because of the massive pro-war demonstrations we were seeing every day.”
No, they were forced to go to war because of the repeated and growing aggression of Arab/Islamic fascists and their attacks upon the U.S and her allies.
“What was I thinking?”
Who said you were?
Oh, and the majority of Americans have always supported the way on Arab/Islamic terrorism. If their is a War Party, its most of the U.S. and always have been. from the Revolution on.
What seemed to be true about the shell… has been confirmed. It was indeed a Sarin binary shell. It contained 3-4 quarts of material. The item I read did not clearly state whether this was 3-4qt of precursors or precursors to produce 3-4qt of sarin. It hardly matters though. This is enough to kill a very large number of people if used ‘properly’.
I really don’t think you can assume this was just a single misplaced shell. I understand there are perhaps 500+ such shells that were never accounted for, so I would assume there are now 499+ still out there.
No Shawn, we were not forced to invade Iraq when we did because of “ArabIslamic facists”. You’re trying to claim the decision was made by circumstances and not by politicans. You’re confusing (as usual) the question of whether the War Party was right (they weren’t) and the question of whether they exist at all.
We’ve seen the first one over a year after the invasion, and it wasn’t used properly. That says there isn’t a stockpile available to people who know how to use them.
“No Shawn, we were not forced to invade Iraq when we did because of “ArabIslamic facists”. You’re trying to claim the decision was made by circumstances and not by politicans.”
No, I’m saying the decision was made by politicians based on very real circumstances, circumstances which you ignore.
” You’re confusing (as usual) the question of whether the War Party was right (they weren’t)”
Of course they were. Mabey YOU think its just fine for an Arab Fascist tyrant to attack his neighbours, attempt to assasinate U.S Presidents, fund terrorism against Israel, and seek WMD’s to attack Israel and anyone else the tyrant does not like, but most Americans dont. They think that leaving such a man in power is just a little bit stupid.
And the so called War Party does not exist. Like the term welfare/warfare state its just a bit of bullshit propaganda by pro-fascists to excuse their betrayal of their own country.
And this is what this is really all about. From the time of the America First movement in the 1930’s many of the tiny minority of paleo- isolationists have been people who hated Jews and sympathised with fascism. Its true of Patrick Buchanan and his little crowd. Its true of the isolationsists over at Chronicles magazine and at anti-war.com who supported Serbian fascist genocide. And its true of those who supported Saddam Hussein whos Baaathist national socialist party took its inspiration from Hitler and Stalin.
Shawn, you do realize that you’re admitting your Iraq war is a bust, don’t you? If this had been the success you want us to believe it was, you wouldn’t be denying there was a segment of the political culture pushing for the war against opposition and that you were a part of it (even if a small one).
If the Iraq war had been a success, you’d be bragging about how your side was right and your opponents were wrong (implying there is a “your side” whether you like the term War Party or not). The fact that you’re trying to distance yourself from the decisionmaking that got us into this mess only shows you realize the whole thing is circling the drain, even if you don’t want to admit it.
Shawn, you’re a member of the ‘party’ that got us into Iraq – why aren’t you gloating about how right your party was instead of trying to pretend like they don’t exist?
Scott, rather than engage in rather childish “the war hasn’t been a success, so na-nah!”-type bickering, let’s get back to the point of Dale’s post — components of the sort that were supposed not to exist in Iraq were found.
Of course, even if you thought the invasion was not justified, a good question to ask is what we can do to deal with the proliferation of such weapons? If not pre-emption, then what? Should we for example encourage folks to build home shelters, get first-aid training, strengthen public transport systems like the London Underground, etc?
There certainly may be some signifigance to this shell, but it’s certainly a far, FAR cry from validating the WMD motive of the war. This is an artillery shell. It may well fit under the seemingly ever increasing umbrella of the WMD designation, but don’t try to say for a second that this is what people who supported the war had in mind. Bush and co. were painting a picture of mushroom clouds and deadly viral attacks running rampant through world populations. It certainly wouldn’t have been very credible to say we need to invade because Saddam has shells, which seem to me to, really not much more than WWI level weapon technology. Deadly?… sure it is… Should it have been there?… certainly not… is it validation for all the lives lost and taxpayer money spent?…
This artillery shell has all the earmarks of being one of the unaccounted for number which were very much part of the UN resolutions. Obviously I cannot say whether it is a loner or not; I personally expect that where there is one there are two or ten. As to whether the full 500+ missing shells are extant… ? The fact that we haven’t got them yet goes into our (thus far) failure column. I know it is not going to be easy to get them all and it takes time but I’m impatient… I’d rather we find them before someone uses them.
We of course will never find them all. That is the world we live in. Perhaps in coming decades we’ll have grade school children go through Atropine drills in the way I went through Civil Defense drills (translated: calmly go home and die with your folks) in the early 60’s.
Iraq certainly had the capabilities for things nuclear; plans, technical documents and master template parts for their nuclear program have indeed been found. The program may not have been active at the time of the war, but it was definitely in suspended animation, just waiting for the world to look the other way for a year or two. I’m personally rather glad the place has been taken *permanently* out of the nuclear business. I count that as a major success.
Dr. Germ is a guest of the coalition. I count that as a major success.
Dear Glorious Leader Saddam is a guest of the coalition and will hopefully be executed by the Iraqi’s sometime in the next year. I count that as a wondrous, marvelous success.
I really find it hard to see a downside to putting the Hussein family out of business.
There’s nothing childish about wanting those who agitated for this war held accountable for the unfolding disaster they and they alone are responsible for. Its no worse than throwing the failure of the USSR in the face of hard core socialists.
Did you ever see the RoadToSurfdom.com “Coalition Forces Arrest Magneto” posting, about the eeevil comic book nicknames and Osama-cave (remember that?) graphics our govt fed us as propoganda?
If the Iraqis want us out should we leave immediately, de-Baathification (and ‘resolution’ of the WMD issue) be dammed?
Thank you, Samizdata:
U.S. attack said to kill scores at Iraq wedding
BAGHDAD, Iraq – A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating.
Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said the dead included 15 children and 10 women. …
“Shawn, you do realize that you’re admitting your Iraq war is a bust, don’t you? If this had been the success you want us to believe it was, you wouldn’t be denying there was a segment of the political culture pushing for the war against opposition and that you were a part of it (even if a small one).”
So because I dont accept your conspiracy theories I’m admitting the war was wrong? Thats truly cluthcing at straws 🙂
What I have said all along is that MOST Americans, myself included supported the our nations right to self defense. That does not make us a “War Party”.
And it was not a “segment”, it was MOST of the political culture, but far more importantly MOST of America.
“If the Iraq war had been a success, you’d be bragging about how your side was right and your opponents were wrong ”
No I wouldnt, because I dont see war, or beingn right about evil as ever something to brag about. As to “our side” you mean most Americans.
“The fact that you’re trying to distance yourself from the decisionmaking that got us into this mess”
Rubbish. I stand proudly with ALL patriotic Americans.
“Shawn, you’re a member of the ‘party’ that got us into Iraq ”
You mean Saddam’s Baathist party? Nope. Because the truth you dont want to admit is that the Iraq Baathists were the ONLY party that got us into Iraq.
Thats the fundamental difference between your view and mine. You think some faction in the U.S got us into Iraq. I say the Baathists in Iraq did.
“There’s nothing childish about wanting those who agitated for this war held accountable for the unfolding disaster they and they alone are responsible for.”
What agitation? Saddam invaded Kuwait. Because of that we were already in a war with Iraq and have been since 1991. If there was any agitation it was to finish the job, not get us into something new.
And the only person who should be held accountable is Saddam Hussein.
On the other hand, I want people like to YOU to take repsonsibility for wantimg to keep a man in power who had 2 year old children tortured and raped in front of their parents. I want you to justify that and go to Iraq and explain to their parents why you would have done nothing about it. I want to you to go to Israel and explain why a man who helped fund terrorist attacks against Israeli’s should have been left in power to continue. Explain to the victims parents why you think he should have been given a free ride.
So lets turn this around to where it should be. Why dont YOU take some responsibility and justify your cowardice?
Shawn, “the majority” supported the war because your idiotvangelical president lied about WMD (bringing this back on topic – one shell does not a WMD threat make). There was no immediate threat from Iraq that required invasion right then and there – it was an optional war.
If Americans are so beastly, then surely it would be best if the US withdrew all aid and minded it’s own business. After all, you don’t want those nasty Americans intervening in “humanitarian disasters”, they will only make it worse!
BTW I note that US feminists have yet to say anything about the women soldiers caught up in the Al Ghraib scandal. It’s all men’s fault, no doubt.
“Shawn, “the majority” supported the war because your idiotvangelical president lied about WMD (bringing this back on topic – one shell does not a WMD threat make). There was no immediate threat from Iraq that required invasion right then and there – it was an optional”
Scott, the only person lying here is you. I see you resort when pushed to pathetic little slurs on Americans. That we only bought into lies. That our Pres is an idiot. That hes a, shock horror, Evangelical Christian, as though merely saying this is supposed to mean something.
Problems.
Americans supported the war because they knew that sooner or later Saddam had to be dealt with. They STILL support the war even though large scale WMD’s have yet to be found. So your wrong on that point.
The Pres is not an evangelical Christian, he’s a mainstream middle of the road Episcopalian who goes to a Methodist church. But even if he was so what? What is this supposed to mean. Given that Evangelicals are one of the largest religious groups in America and help to form the backbone of the conservative movement, is your argument really based on ignorant prejudice about them?
He didint lie about anything. Large amounts of Saddams chemical stocks remain unaccounted for. Do YOU know where they are?
The only thing you could argue is timing. But there is no logical/moral argument about the fact that sooner or later Saddam had to go.
Again, why dont YOU take responsibility for your stand. How many innocent people, Israeli’s, Iraqis and other Arabs were YOU willing to sacrifice by keeping Saddam in power? 100, 1000, 2000, 10, 000? How many little children raped and tortured was ok with you?
Dale:
One might ask what the coalition has learned from these individuals. If they know where the WMD arsenals are hidden, they are evidently not telling us. Presumably the coalition has viewed it as a matter of some import that information be extracted from such individuals, so I imagine that they would have been subjected to some fairly robust questioning – if not a bit of the good old stress and duress. Don’t you think, Dale, that it is therefore somewhat odd that we are not turning up WMD?
CBS Poll:
“Just 29 percent — the lowest figure so far in CBS News Polls — say the result of the war in Iraq has been worth the cost in lives and money. Almost two-thirds say it has not been worth it. ”
So the Weekly Standard is lying?
“Finally, there are social and religious conservatives to pay attention to. Bush adviser Karl Rove has worried aloud about 4 million religious conservatives who failed to vote in 2000. Next year, Bush shouldn’t expect his evangelical Christian faith, now well known, to lure them to the polls. He’ll need to address their concerns–abortion, gay marriage, pornography, anti-Christian bias. ”
Most likely well past the end of their shelf life and now useless.
There’s no shortage of tyrants around. Either you advocate getting rid of them all by immediate US invasion, or you accept that you aren’t personally responsible for the crimes they commit if you leave them in power. Don’t make a claim about removing Saddam that doesn’t apply equally well to every other tyrant on Earth.
Shawn, you aren’t responsible for everyone killed by their own govt in North Korea for the same reason I’m not responsible for everyone Saddam may have killed.
Hey Scott, you asswipe. That “wedding party” was heavily armed, in a convoy of Sport Utes, had satcoms, 2 million Dinar, and happened to be founde adjacent to a little strip of houses on the Syrian border believed to be safe houses for Syrian thugs on their way into Iraq to take a crack at beheading an American.
Of course at this point, to you, all we Americans are raping murdering thugs, since a relative handful of our number have stepped over the line, and we’re far, far worse than poor lil’ ol’ Saddam, who never did nothin’ to nobody…
Scott, I also noted you did not say anything about my question of how he would deal with the issue of chemical weapons in the absence of pre-emption.
I notice a repeat pattern with a certain sort of libertarian — they never have any concrete suggestions on such points, only a mix of denial and name-calling.
But libertarians can no more evade this point than we can, say, evade something like the issue of global warming. Let’s assume the latter is true. What should we do about it? All too often the response is either to deny that X or Y exists or attack anyone who has some ideas as being a “socialist”. Far too many libertarians — not just the Raimondo crowd — seem more interested in their own precious ideological purity than in a willingness to think out loud about threats me may face.
It goes without saying that this will fall on deaf ears.
I’m allowed to kill person X if he’s about to kill someone else, so there are circumstances where its OK to kill person X, so lets kill him now.
Someone botched the use of one single chemical shell, that does not indicate there are another 499 available to smarter opponents. The question of what to do about chemical weapons doesn’t apply because its pretty clear that Saddam didn’t have any, and the evidence was known by our lying govt to be shaky at the time.
How is it ‘denial’ for me to deny Saddam was a threat, since he didn’t have the f’ing weapons the War Party keeps claiming he had?
One minor correction: this is not a case of ‘found one, 499 still missing’. The 500 shells not accounted for contained a different filling. Binary Sarin was known to exist only in Iraqi 122mm rockets, not 155mm shells.
This shell, although similar to the munitions found by UNSCOM inspectors, is a different beast. UNSCOM never detected any of these, and their existence was never declared, so there are an *unknown* number still around.
Scott…
and so?
You make some decent points for your side (which i’m often on too), but you can’t resist the cheap shots, can you? Where’s the relevance?
Those pics aren’t a cheap shot – they’re facts.
Scott,
Sure they’re facts, but are they pertinent?
Someone on the other side of the argument could post pictures of gassed marsh arabs. Both their pictures & yours would be irrelevant to the particular issue being discussed here, and constitute a cheap appeal to people’s emotions, going “oo.. look how bad the things you condone are”, which in both cases would be untrue.
If people are going to assert that their war was justified because it rid the world of one Iraqi chemical shell, then what their war entails is absolutely relevant. Is their war worth ‘it’? That depends on what ‘it’ is:
GI: Boy mistreated to get dad to talk
A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (news – web sites) said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father’s resistance to interrogators.
The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.
Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said. …
…but people who supported the war no more gave their approval to this than you gave your approval to Saddam’s crimes. I agree that these incidents are terrible, & quite possibly symptomatic of a larger problem vis-a-vis our attitude towards the iraqis & this war in general, but I still think it’s irrelevant to the discussion you were having, & unlikely to change anyone’s mind. It just makes you look self righteous.
True or false, would we be more free, and have a smaller govt to contend with, if people pushing for govt action were held responsible for every result of that govt action, good and bad?
Can we hold people who push for socialized medicine accountable for those who die during the long wait for rationed care, even if that’s not the result they claim to have intended?
RCD, doesn’t the tracking the 9/11 attacks (i.e. the terrorist activity w/ enough planning and preparation to have actually done significant damage) back to Afghanistan show the risks to a state sponsor of terrorism, even if we did wind up shortchanging that war for your totally optional war in Iraq?
Sorry – my immediately previous comment was meant for the other thread.
Shawn: “why dont YOU take responsibility for your stand. How many innocent people, Israeli’s, Iraqis and other Arabs were YOU willing to sacrifice by keeping Saddam in power? 100, 1000, 2000, 10, 000? How many little children raped and tortured was ok with you?”
Why is it America’s “responsibility”? Who made the USA the world’s nanny?
OK Scott, I’ll see your 6-month-old Abu Ghraib pictures, and raise you 3 more 18-month old Abu Ghraib pictures.
Game, set and match Alan.
Susan, amen to that. I notice that Scott did not notice my question above of what, given the awful facts of war, a libertarian should actually do about stuff like chem weapons. He evaded the point.
This is what bugs the hell out of me about isolationist libertarians at the moment. To be blunt, it is their sheer intellectual cowardice. Wether it is WMDs, the environment, drugs, or anything else, it seems to be me that honesty requires us to accept worse-case scenarios, such as proliferation of terror weapons, and then try to say what we would do about it. All too often the Scott’s of this world just attack anyone who suggests a course of action involving military power.
It is not good enough. I have read enough of the crap from people like Scott these past three years to regard the isolationist position to be the vacuous posturing that it is. Until and when these folk come out with some constructive suggestions on how we deal with terror, WMDs, rogue states and the like, may I suggest they shut the f**k up.